


Dusk

by theclockiscomplete



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 18:52:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5060056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclockiscomplete/pseuds/theclockiscomplete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's been chasing her since Christmas. She's finally too tired to keep pretending she's fine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dusk

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know about you, but I love these little notes at the beginning, in which the author is free to put themselves out there with all their thoughts and foreground of their work. It's a kind of context. Anyway, I have not seen "The Girl Who Died." I will be seeing it this weekend because my sister is oh so very into Doctor Who, courtesy of yours truly. I will be continuing the series because she loves it. But I feel like I have outgrown the show-- it was incredibly important to me for a very crucial point in my life. I found it when in the worst of my depression and while it did not lift me out, it kept me afloat. For that, I will always be grateful. But I think the time when I wanted to write about everything is over. All I am really taking away from this is whouffaldi. To me, it is the ultimate in an asexual relationship, even though I do sometimes move beyond that. So this isn't goodbye, but it is likely a heads up that I'll be slowing way down. Have been already. Prepare for lots of AUs as I wrangle my two favorite idiots in and out of various shenanigans.

She’d had worse. Moreover, she’d had more _creative_ methods applied to make her say one thing or another. This…this was an all-out beating, nothing more to it, no goal for them other than pain. Clara touched her face gently and winced as the Doctor rummaged through a nearby cabinet, arms already full of various gels and bandages. She fingered a run in the knee of her tights, hissing a little when the fabric roughed over a particularly angry scrape. When he turned back around, it was to find her picking space gravel out the palm of her hand, split lip tightening white with every tug. “I’m fine,” she said, as she had after every other bump and bruise, but he did not respond and she didn’t run. Maybe that was why he was scrambling around with such fervor—to bandage her up before she could get away from him again. Her lip twitched up in a small smirk. Ow.

“Stop that,” he said, collapsing onto the stool beside her bed. He dumped his collection of supplies on the nightstand. When she blinked at him, “Let me.” She held out her hand and stared him in the eyes as he took it gently in his own. He raised her palm to his lips, a featherlight kiss, and only then broke eye contact to focus on extracting the dark bits of rock and dirt just beneath her skin.

For a while there was only silence and the occasional _plink_ of gravel on the glass dish that had appeared amid the armload of supplies. God only knew how he’d fit all of that stuff in his arms in the first place. He’d probably tell her Time Lords were bigger on the inside too. Maybe that’s why he had been afraid to hug her. _Lots of speculation today, Oswald. Can you back it up with properly cited quotations and evidence?_ She resisted a hysterical giggle, focused on him focusing on her with the kind of scrutiny she’d attributed mostly to his projects. It was while his long fingers were massaging soothing gel into her palms that he said, “I think we should talk.”

And here they were. Clara tried to smirk, felt the cut on her lip stretch, thought better of it. She huffed instead and looked away. “Captive audience?” There was something trembling in her chest, there since their time on Skaro, and it was expanding almost enough to shake her physically. If she was being honest, the knot was what had kept her in his arms when he’d burst through the TARDIS doors this time. Normally she wriggled down. Cuffed his shoulder. Called him silly. Limped to the washroom. She wondered if he could hear the trembling in her voice, feel it under the pads of his fingers.

He hummed. _Plink._ “’Captive audience,’” he mused, and then inclined his head. “Perhaps.” He finished winding the bandage around her hand, dropped another kiss on her palm. “‘Captive’ would certainly be an appropriate modifier.” He wiggled his fingers, and she put her legs up in his lap.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You,” he said simply. Oh, he was on to her, and she wasn’t sure if she could shake him this time. Wasn’t sure if she wanted to. He took a knife from the pile of supplies and cut the fabric of her tights around her legs, rolling it down to expose the bruises and the scrapes in various hues and stages of healing. He sighed, looking suddenly weary. He dropped a kiss to the angriest of the bruises and then set to work with the salve.

In the end, old habits won out and Clara deflected. “Gonna have to be a little more specific.”

“You’re hurt.” He placed an emphasis on the last word that impressed a significance. Oh yes, he was definitely onto her.

She shrugged, aiming for nonchalance. Winced. “I’m human,” she said. “It happens.” And then, knowing it wasn’t enough, “You’re always going on about how breakable we are. No telepathic defenses or ability to grow a new limb, slow healing, only one—”

“You’re hurt,” he said a little louder, “and you’re hurt on purpose.”

She tilted her head. One last try. A for effort. If he wanted this, he was going to work for it. “Why Doctor,” she said, “that just might be the closest I’ve heard you come to addressing a real conversation.” The knot in her stomach was growing even as she used his own evasion tactics against him. “And besides, I didn’t go to this planet with the intention of getting the lights kicked out of me.”

His face didn’t change. He hadn’t taken the bait. Shit. “The Dalek, Clara.” Her chest tightened. There was no sense in playing stupid. If she deflected now, they may never find themselves here again. Clara made a snap decision. Caved. The knot in her chest loosened; her ribs felt as though they had collapsed suddenly, and she could breathe. So she did. Deep breath. He reached up and cupped her face in a hand. She pressed into it, felt him twitch in surprise. He was right to expect her to flinch away, she reckoned. She’d been doing it for weeks now. “Talk to me,” he said.

“I…” her mouth worked for a moment. “I don’t know if I can.” He waited. “All that time I hoped we would talk, and now…” she laughed, humorlessly.

“Start with what you were saying inside the Dalek?” It was a quiet request, and Clara suddenly realized that this, of all things, must have been bothering him for days. His gaze wandered back down to her legs, where his thumb had been rubbing the blue gel in circles over each bruise and swollen spot. He began dabbing at the bloody scrapes with a warm, damp rag. Clara was surprised at how keenly she felt the absence of his cool hand on her face.

She hadn’t cried when he’d held her, when she’d fallen out of the Dalek and into his arms. There’d been too much going on, too much at stake to let her guard down. But she had squeezed him almost as desperately as he had squeezed her and then they’d run, and then she’d kept them running for weeks. Occasionally, she tripped, but the alternative was stopping and thinking, and frankly the bruises and scrapes made more sense. There was pain, and there was a clear reason. This other thing was convoluted and messy and she didn’t know how to begin to unravel it, so the best remedy was to have pain that made sense.

She remembered that she was supposed to be answering. She cleared her throat, bought herself an extra moment to rally her courage. “I said…I said my name. I said I would never kill you.” She made a humorless noise. “Begged you not to kill me, just a bit.” His grip on her ankle tightened for just a moment, but she couldn’t see his face past the silver curls. “I said ‘I love you,’ once.” She held her breath.

“Yeah and so did I, when I was getting those probes out of your skull. I meant the other things. What else? It was a surprisingly boring conversation on my end.” He waved a hand in the air, didn’t look at her face. “Lots of repetition. Then again, I don’t suppose they need a particularly wide vocabulary in the first place. Exterminate pretty much covers the scope of their affairs.” He was rambling. More than that, he was giving her an out. She considered the offer, felt the ends of the knot inside her pulling together threateningly. Breathed.

“I meant it,” she said when he finally stopped for breath. She’d been wondering if he’d ever need to; he’d hurtled the subject of Daleks, skipped briefly over ducks, and was going into the complex mechanics of UV nebulae before pausing for that crucial moment. Now he was blinking at her, his face unreadable. “I really, really meant it,” she concluded. Brilliant, Oswald. Way to put those English skills to use. After the third blink, Clara was ready to burst. “Say something.” She tried not to beg.

He shifted so that he was nearly flush with the bed and instead of her feet on his knee, she was now almost entirely in his lap. “Clara,” he said. It would never sound the same in anyone else’s mouth, rolling off of his tongue like a benediction. “Clara, do you remember how I got the probes out of your head?”

“Painfully,” she said, and they shared a hesitant smile.

“I imagine it was. You see, nobody has survived long enough inside a Dalek to find out the best way to…unplug as it were.” He placed cool fingers on each of Clara’s temples and looked directly at her. “But you,” he chuckled. “My impossible girl, you figured it out.” Clara’s head tilted slightly under his hands. “Love,” the Doctor said in response. “Even with every one of your impulses going haywire, saying the opposite of what you felt…all I did was soak up your emotions and project one wave of your pure, concentrated love.” He smiled and brushed a thumb across her cheek. “Knocked the little buggers right out.”

Clara suddenly felt like she was falling, unable to feel the bed or his knees beneath her, vision hazing to the white of the room. She felt like crying. So naturally, she snarked. “Just mine, huh?”

The Doctor blinked. “Your—what? No of course not.” Clara’s eyes snapped up to meet his. “If it was just yours, you wouldn’t have needed my help. Clara, that’s the point. It took both of us. Do you understand?” He looked suddenly the way he had on that Christmas day when he’d begged her to come with him, and she was no more able to resist him now than she had been then.

She took a deep, shuddering breath. Her voice, when it finally arrived, came out a shaky whisper. “I…I might need a demonstration.”

She watched in amazement as the lines in his face rearranged his features into a mask of pure delight. “It would be my pleasure,” he said, and they were both smiling when the Doctor’s lips brushed ever so lightly against the healing split in hers. It’d figure, she thought, that the first time they kissed they’d wind up tasting dirt and healing goop. Nothing could ever be just normal for them.

Everything was not okay, she knew. Could never be put right with a simple admission of a bond that had been there from the beginning, but this was a start. She fisted the front of his hoodie in her hands and closed her eyes.


End file.
